Travel misery is set to continue today as the Transport Secretary promises to hold an inquiry into the way stranded passengers were treated at Heathrow airport over the weekend.

Aeroplanes are seen stranded at Heathrow Airport

Passengers hoping for a Christmas getaway have found themselves stranded at airports, with hundreds of people camping out in terminals for another night after planes were grounded.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said airports had been hit by extreme weather conditions and he did not want to ‘distract’ management attention from efforts to clear a ‘huge’ backlog of flights by carrying out investigations now into what happened over the last few days.

But he said that once the problems were over, there had to be a ‘discussion’ about what went wrong – including how passengers were treated once flights were disrupted.

He told BBC Breakfast: ‘Once we have got through the problem, once we have got things moving again, then we will have to have that discussion and find out exactly what went wrong and, most importantly, what went wrong in handling passengers who were stranded.

‘I think whilst people are obviously deeply upset about the inconvenience, particularly at this time of year, of having their travel plans disrupted, most of what I am hearing is a sense of outrage about the way they were then treated when they were stranded at Heathrow airport.’

Temperatures plunged overnight, with a record low for Northern Ireland seen in Castlederg, County Tyrone, where the mercury plunged to minus 17.6C. The lowest UK temperature overnight was thought to be minus 19.6C, recorded in Chesham, Buckinghamshire.

Forecasters have said the UK is experiencing some of the most severe winter weather in a century, with continued sub-zero temperatures and snowfalls of up to 20cm expected today.

Motoring organisations have warned of ‘potentially fatal’ conditions on the roads as commuters struggle into work, with others hoping to make an early start to their Christmas holidays.

Only about 20 flights were able to take off or land at Heathrow on Sunday out of 1,300 flights that usually go through the airport in a day.

Heathrow is running a ‘limited schedule of arrivals and departures’ from 6am, a spokeswoman said, but disruption is expected for days to come.

Gatwick Airport is open with operations ‘returning to normal’, but passengers have been warned to contact their airline before travelling as delays and cancellations are set to continue.

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